THE SHORTWAVE REPORT
The Shortwave Report Is a 30 minute review of news stories recorded from a shortwave radio. Times and frequencies for English-language programs are included to encourage you to listen on your own. It's easy. There is a new show posted every Friday morning, record it in mono!
FREE TO REBROADCAST! Please notify.
Latest show:
PROGRAM NOTES 03/18/11- This weeks show features stories from NHK Japan, Radio Deutsche-Welle, Radio Havana Cuba, and The Voice of Russia.
From JAPAN- First a review of Wednesday's news on the nuclear disaster. Then a Japanese nuclear expert speaks about the fire at the nuclear reactor and how it could affect the nuclear fuel rods stored there. The Japanese Emperor delivered a video message to the people, a rare event.
From GERMANY- The nuclear disaster in Japan has caused a turnaround in German plans to extend the lives of its power plants. The events in Japan may end the recent romance governments have had with nuclear power developers. Anti-Gaddafi rebels in Libya seemed to be failing as proposals to impose a no-fly zone in the country failed to get support.
From CUBA- This weekend saw mass anti-nuclear protests across Europe. Tens of thousands of young Palestinians demonstrated on Tuesday for reconciliation between all Palestinians. In Bahrain, state forces are using deadly force in attacking protestors. Hillary Clinton is visiting Egypt where she has been snubbed by the youth groups that spearheaded the anti-Mubarak protests. Two more children have been killed by US troops in Afghanistan while General Petraeus said that US troops may stay beyond the latest withdrawal date of 2014.
From RUSSIA- On Saturday at a memorial for 74 civilians victims, Afghan President Karzai urged US led military forces to leave Afghanistan.
--"One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it."
--Gaston Bachelard
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Showing posts with label Podcasts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Podcasts. Show all posts
To the Best of Our Knowledge: Arts Education
Arts Education
To the Best of Our Knowledge (Wisconsin Public Radio)
SEGMENT 1:
Eric Booth is one of America's leading teaching artists and trainer of teaching artists. He's also the author of "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator." He talks to Steve Paulson about the current state of arts education in American schools and shares his thoughts on how to engage children through arts education.
SEGMENT 2:
Michael Doucet is the founder of the pioneering, Grammy Award-winning Cajun band, BeauSoleil. The band recently released its 29th album, "Alligator Purse." Doucet also has an extensive background in arts education. He talks to Steve Paulson about educating people about Cajun culture through Cajun music. We also hear some music from BeauSoleil's "Alligator Purse" album.
Katie Salen is a game designer, interactive designer, animator and design educator. She's also the editor of "The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning." Salen talks to Anne Strainchamps about what children can learn from designing and playing games.
SEGMENT 3:
David Gilmour is a Canadian film critic and novelist. He's also the author of a memoir called "The Film Club." In the book, Gilmour writes about his decision to let his son, Jesse, drop out of school, provided that he agrees to watch three movies a week with his father. Gilmour talks to Jim Fleming about the experience. We also hear clips from a few of the films that Gilmour watched with his son
To Listen to the Episode
To the Best of Our Knowledge (Wisconsin Public Radio)
SEGMENT 1:
Eric Booth is one of America's leading teaching artists and trainer of teaching artists. He's also the author of "The Music Teaching Artist's Bible: Becoming a Virtuoso Educator." He talks to Steve Paulson about the current state of arts education in American schools and shares his thoughts on how to engage children through arts education.
SEGMENT 2:
Michael Doucet is the founder of the pioneering, Grammy Award-winning Cajun band, BeauSoleil. The band recently released its 29th album, "Alligator Purse." Doucet also has an extensive background in arts education. He talks to Steve Paulson about educating people about Cajun culture through Cajun music. We also hear some music from BeauSoleil's "Alligator Purse" album.
Katie Salen is a game designer, interactive designer, animator and design educator. She's also the editor of "The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning." Salen talks to Anne Strainchamps about what children can learn from designing and playing games.
SEGMENT 3:
David Gilmour is a Canadian film critic and novelist. He's also the author of a memoir called "The Film Club." In the book, Gilmour writes about his decision to let his son, Jesse, drop out of school, provided that he agrees to watch three movies a week with his father. Gilmour talks to Jim Fleming about the experience. We also hear clips from a few of the films that Gilmour watched with his son
To Listen to the Episode
Radio Open Source: Graham Robb's Paris -- 18 Arrested Explosions
Graham Robb's Paris: 18 Arrested Explosions
By Chris Lydon
Radio Open Source
Graham Robb is making France and the French irresistible again. With an entirely unconventional gift for historically-informed tale-spinning, his Parisians delivers nearly a score of long anecdotes about famous people in real scenes beyond imagining.
Here is Hitler on a tourist sweep through depopulated boulevards of Paris at dawn on a weekend in June, 1940 — thinking out loud with Albert Speer about how the Paris effect might be reproduced in Berlin.
There are Miles Davis and the singer Juliette Greco in love in 1949, and in guileless conversations about “existentialisme” with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Cafe de Flore.
Then there is the assassination attempt that Francois Mitterand stage-managed against himself in 1957 — perhaps in a sort of homage to the “miracle” that saved Charles de Gaulle from great bursts of gunfire inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame in 1944. Mitterand, who liked being known as “the Fox,” survived even the exposure of his own hoax — because, Graham Robb suggests, the French like a trickster and a touch of criminality at the top.
My favorite Robb character, from the 1830s, is the arch-criminal and escape artist Vidocq, a master of disguises who hid himself on Paris streets as a trash pile, who conspired with the cops and built the first private detective agency known to the world.
What is Graham Robb up to? In his fragmentary episodes, he seems to be telling us something of the non-linear course of events in general. His “explosive fragments,” I observe, remind me of David Shields’ ideal for the modern “lyric essay”: an explosion on every page. Yes, but no, Graham Robb rejoins:
Parisians extends the project of Robb’s breakthrough, The Discovery of France, the fruit of 4 years and 14,000 miles on a bicycle, in which Robb reintroduced France as, until yesterday, anything but a single, sovereign culture. He found a new planet at every bike resting spot, “a vast encyclopedia of micro-civilizations” in sum. His France is a nation of villages where, when the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889, only about 20 percent of the population spoke French. The short form of Parisians is: out with old notions of order, majesty and the grandeur of Paris; in with the ragged, the jagged, the forgotten personal perspectives, the violent and the out-and-out weird. Robb’s stress on fragmentation seems deliberately set against the national impulse in President Sarkozy’s politics — against Sarko’s famous contempt for the riotous, car-burning brown-skinned racaille, or scum, of Paris’s near suburbs.
To Listen to the Coversation
By Chris Lydon
Radio Open Source
Graham Robb is making France and the French irresistible again. With an entirely unconventional gift for historically-informed tale-spinning, his Parisians delivers nearly a score of long anecdotes about famous people in real scenes beyond imagining.
Here is Hitler on a tourist sweep through depopulated boulevards of Paris at dawn on a weekend in June, 1940 — thinking out loud with Albert Speer about how the Paris effect might be reproduced in Berlin.
There are Miles Davis and the singer Juliette Greco in love in 1949, and in guileless conversations about “existentialisme” with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir at the Cafe de Flore.
Then there is the assassination attempt that Francois Mitterand stage-managed against himself in 1957 — perhaps in a sort of homage to the “miracle” that saved Charles de Gaulle from great bursts of gunfire inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame in 1944. Mitterand, who liked being known as “the Fox,” survived even the exposure of his own hoax — because, Graham Robb suggests, the French like a trickster and a touch of criminality at the top.
My favorite Robb character, from the 1830s, is the arch-criminal and escape artist Vidocq, a master of disguises who hid himself on Paris streets as a trash pile, who conspired with the cops and built the first private detective agency known to the world.
What is Graham Robb up to? In his fragmentary episodes, he seems to be telling us something of the non-linear course of events in general. His “explosive fragments,” I observe, remind me of David Shields’ ideal for the modern “lyric essay”: an explosion on every page. Yes, but no, Graham Robb rejoins:
Yes, it’s nice to have explosive fragments, but it’s also nice to just arrest the explosion at a particular moment and see exactly what’s going on at the moment of impact, the moment of destruction, and just take a lot more time to look at things which are just flashing past. It’s not a search engine kind of history. It’s almost the opposite. It’s the single fragment kind of history, and how much you can discover in one particular thing if you stop and look at it and go into it as deeply as possible, instead of skimming over the surface and collecting impressions.
Parisians extends the project of Robb’s breakthrough, The Discovery of France, the fruit of 4 years and 14,000 miles on a bicycle, in which Robb reintroduced France as, until yesterday, anything but a single, sovereign culture. He found a new planet at every bike resting spot, “a vast encyclopedia of micro-civilizations” in sum. His France is a nation of villages where, when the Eiffel Tower went up in 1889, only about 20 percent of the population spoke French. The short form of Parisians is: out with old notions of order, majesty and the grandeur of Paris; in with the ragged, the jagged, the forgotten personal perspectives, the violent and the out-and-out weird. Robb’s stress on fragmentation seems deliberately set against the national impulse in President Sarkozy’s politics — against Sarko’s famous contempt for the riotous, car-burning brown-skinned racaille, or scum, of Paris’s near suburbs.
It’s a bit ironic that Sarkozy started a debate on a national identity, because he is stressing the rifts that there are in French and Parisian society. He’s a very Parisian president. The biggest rift in France is between Paris and the provinces…. And there is also the rift between bourgeois Paris, white Paris and so-called immigrant Paris which very often isn’t immigrant at all, they’re French too. Sarkozy’s exploited that old fear that probably goes way back to the time of the Gauls… It’s the fear of what lies beyond in the hinterland, and that fear is more virulent than ever in Paris. And even today, if you tell some Parisians that you’ve been to Clichy-sous-Bois or one of the other northern suburbs, they won’t believe you. They won’t believe that you can go there and talk to people and come back alive.
To Listen to the Coversation
Radio Open Source: David Bromwich Channels Edmund Burke -- "America is out of itself"
Bromwich Channels Edmund Burke: "America is out of itself"
by Christopher Lydon
Radio Open Source (Watson Institute for International Studies)
David Bromwich is channeling the lost conservative voice of Edmund Burke, the missing wisdom on our mad Afghanistan misadventure. This is what Yale’s Sterling Professors of Literature are for, now and then: to recalibrate commentary to the cadences of immortality
In my long-ago Yale time, Burke was the voice of God for aspiring right-wingers in the school of Bill Buckley and the National Review; he was Buckley’s model of judgment, custom, continuity, restraint, “the wisdom of our ancestors” and the notion that “to make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”
In his own Parliamentary time (1765-1794), Burke had preached conciliation, not war, with the rebel colonies in America. He wrote the book on France “out of itself” in the Jacobin riot of revolution. More instructive for us, Burke was the conscience of the British Empire who drove the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, the abusive, plundering chief of the East India Company, for “the great disgrace of the British character in India.”
Our Burke bumper-sticker today is that he “loved liberty and hated violence.” As Jedediah Purdy read Burke in his admirable post-911 reflection, Being America, “Enough violence always destroys liberty; mutual respect is the best stay against violence. Moreover, the two appeal to opposite parts of human nature: violence to self-righteousness and the taste for domination, liberty to forbearance and a love of everyday life.” For Professor Bromwich, a modern man of classic letters, Burke remains “the greatest political writer in the English language.”
Burke stands, in Bromwich’s estimate, for the exemplary role of government “in showing the self-government of the powerful themselves, which means the self-restraint of the powerful, which means the resort to violence only as a last resort, and the responsibility of those who rule not to try to break the human personality or character or texture of any of the societies they come into contact with.”
I am asking David Bromwich as he finishes an intellectual biography of Burke for an American version of the great man. Closest approximations: the late Reinhold Niebuhr, Andrew Bacevich of The Limits of Power or Chalmers Johnson of The Sorrows of Empire. I am pestering David Bromwich for a Burkean view of the American predator drone strikes on Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example. He is observing that President Obama, who grew up with a global perspective, has fallen short not least as a teacher in office. He dubs Barack Obama “the Establishment President” in the London Review of Books this spring. In our conversation he muses that Obama…
To Listen to the Conversation
by Christopher Lydon
Radio Open Source (Watson Institute for International Studies)
David Bromwich is channeling the lost conservative voice of Edmund Burke, the missing wisdom on our mad Afghanistan misadventure. This is what Yale’s Sterling Professors of Literature are for, now and then: to recalibrate commentary to the cadences of immortality
In my long-ago Yale time, Burke was the voice of God for aspiring right-wingers in the school of Bill Buckley and the National Review; he was Buckley’s model of judgment, custom, continuity, restraint, “the wisdom of our ancestors” and the notion that “to make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”
In his own Parliamentary time (1765-1794), Burke had preached conciliation, not war, with the rebel colonies in America. He wrote the book on France “out of itself” in the Jacobin riot of revolution. More instructive for us, Burke was the conscience of the British Empire who drove the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, the abusive, plundering chief of the East India Company, for “the great disgrace of the British character in India.”
Our Burke bumper-sticker today is that he “loved liberty and hated violence.” As Jedediah Purdy read Burke in his admirable post-911 reflection, Being America, “Enough violence always destroys liberty; mutual respect is the best stay against violence. Moreover, the two appeal to opposite parts of human nature: violence to self-righteousness and the taste for domination, liberty to forbearance and a love of everyday life.” For Professor Bromwich, a modern man of classic letters, Burke remains “the greatest political writer in the English language.”
Burke stands, in Bromwich’s estimate, for the exemplary role of government “in showing the self-government of the powerful themselves, which means the self-restraint of the powerful, which means the resort to violence only as a last resort, and the responsibility of those who rule not to try to break the human personality or character or texture of any of the societies they come into contact with.”
I am asking David Bromwich as he finishes an intellectual biography of Burke for an American version of the great man. Closest approximations: the late Reinhold Niebuhr, Andrew Bacevich of The Limits of Power or Chalmers Johnson of The Sorrows of Empire. I am pestering David Bromwich for a Burkean view of the American predator drone strikes on Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example. He is observing that President Obama, who grew up with a global perspective, has fallen short not least as a teacher in office. He dubs Barack Obama “the Establishment President” in the London Review of Books this spring. In our conversation he muses that Obama…
…is a kind of academic character that I feel I’m familiar with. The strongest, most formative environment that he grew up in was academic and professional. He’s been around vaguely left-liberal but also corporate moneyed types, people like his Chicago crowd in Hyde Park, but also like Michael Froman, Jason Furman, Geithner, Summers, etc. He’s been around people like this for much of his life. And somebody like that thinks that the good people, the thinking people have hold of a lot of power already, and the plan of good sense should just be to make them rule in the right way, and to begin by speaking in a moderate tone… His sense of power being in roughly the right hands—it needs calibration and adjustment but not too much change, and it needs a push with the right attitudes more than force or distinction of policy—that seems to me who he is from my academic acquaintance with people like that. Now, the great exception to this would seem to be what he’s done with health care, but I think the way he did it tells more about him than the actual contents of what he has done. Health care was the mainstream left-liberal Democratic Party domestic policy that people wanted to see something done with for the last 50 years, and he decided to make his mark with that at some risk. It was a very peculiar decision, but in one sense the decision of a very conventional mind…
[Barack Obama] is a very fatherly parent in charge of a family that he doesn’t come home to that often. He thinks that his word goes, but he doesn’t watch too closely what follows when he says, “This is what I demand.” So, for example, on the closing of Guantanamo, he made that the first big pitch of his administration. It was very important, but there was apparently no follow-up pushed by him within his administration. Time was given for his political opponents, which includes the whole Republican Party, to rally against him, and now here we are almost a year and a half later: Guantanamo is not only still open, but there is no sign of it being near closing. He spoke with a tone of command, but the command was not followed, and he himself didn’t back his command with action.
If you pursue that again and again and again in one policy after another, you gradually become a leader who talks rather than acts, and you are known for that.
To Listen to the Conversation
The F Word: Amy Clausen -- Women and Skepticism
Women and Skepticism
The F Word
Amanda Chalmers and Meghan Murphy discuss women's relationship to skepticism with our guest Amy Clausen, and examine why it is such a male dominated movement.
To Listen to the Discussion
The F Word
Amanda Chalmers and Meghan Murphy discuss women's relationship to skepticism with our guest Amy Clausen, and examine why it is such a male dominated movement.
To Listen to the Discussion
David Korten: Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
David Korten: Agenda for a New Economy -- From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
Needs No Introduction
Once a "very conservative republican," David Korten holds an MBA and PhD From Stanford Business School and worked for five and a half years as a faculty member of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business. After spending a number of years working in the global South, believing that all these low-income countries needed was to adopt America's capitalist system in order to resolve poverty, his perspective changed and he began to recognize the way in which our current economic system functions (and thrives) based on inequality, environmental destruction and social conflict.
Realizing that our global economy was based on the premise that individual greed is the path to collective prosperity and that this concept was completely flawed, David Korten came full circle and became an advocate for an economic system that is life-centred and community-based.
He has since authored several books, including: When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. His newest book and the title of this talk is called Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, which argues for an end to the corrupt, phantom-wealth Wall Street money system. It must be replaced by a Main Street money system that favours life values over financial values, roots power in people and community, and supports local resilience and self-organization. This talk took place on October 29, 2010 at the Bronson Centre in Ottawa.
Listen to the Presentation
Needs No Introduction
Once a "very conservative republican," David Korten holds an MBA and PhD From Stanford Business School and worked for five and a half years as a faculty member of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business. After spending a number of years working in the global South, believing that all these low-income countries needed was to adopt America's capitalist system in order to resolve poverty, his perspective changed and he began to recognize the way in which our current economic system functions (and thrives) based on inequality, environmental destruction and social conflict.
Realizing that our global economy was based on the premise that individual greed is the path to collective prosperity and that this concept was completely flawed, David Korten came full circle and became an advocate for an economic system that is life-centred and community-based.
He has since authored several books, including: When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. His newest book and the title of this talk is called Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, which argues for an end to the corrupt, phantom-wealth Wall Street money system. It must be replaced by a Main Street money system that favours life values over financial values, roots power in people and community, and supports local resilience and self-organization. This talk took place on October 29, 2010 at the Bronson Centre in Ottawa.
Listen to the Presentation
Alternatives: Steve Hounsell -- Biodiversity Primer
Biodiversity Primer
Alternatives (Canada)
Everything you ever wanted to know about Biodiversity, sustainability and fighting the good fight from the inside, with Steve Hounsell of Ontario Power Generation.
To Listen to the Interview
Alternatives (Canada)
Everything you ever wanted to know about Biodiversity, sustainability and fighting the good fight from the inside, with Steve Hounsell of Ontario Power Generation.
To Listen to the Interview
Benjamin J. Dueholm: Rules of Misbehavior
Rules of Misbehavior: Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
By Benjamin J. Dueholm
Washington Monthly
...
After twenty years of churning out “Savage Love,” the Seattle writer can lay a legitimate claim to being America’s most influential advice columnist. He is syndicated across the world in more than seventy newspapers—mainly alternative weeklies in the United States—with well over one million in total circulation. Online, he reaches millions more readers. He is a frequent contributor to the popular radio program This American Life, and a “Savage Love” television show on MTV is said to be in the works. His podcast has a higher iTunes ranking than those of Rachel Maddow or the NBC Nightly News, and his four books have sold briskly (a fifth is due out in March). And when it suits him, the range of his commentary has become increasingly broad. In the space of one column—the one where he announced his purchase of Ann Landers’s desk—Savage offered advice to a thirty-year-old woman who wanted to sleep with a seventeen-year-old coworker (“It would be illegal for you to GO AHEAD”), fielded a question from a man with a childbirth fetish, and then, for good measure, advised the Bush administration to take a harder stance on Saudi Arabia.
Savage’s ability to mobilize legions of readers has also matured beyond the lobbing of incendiary Google bombs. Last fall, a streak of suicides by gay teenagers across the country inspired Savage and his husband, Terry, to post a video testimonial on YouTube. The two men recounted their difficulties growing up bullied and harassed, then held up their adult lives—and happiness as a couple—as evidence that, for gay people living in America, “it gets better.” Savage encouraged other people to film their own testimonials and post them online under the heading of the “It Gets Better Project.” A torrent of videos poured in, first from Savage’s regular readers, then from various Hollywood celebrities, and then from leaders in Washington. Hillary Clinton was quickly followed by Nancy Pelosi and President Obama himself, who delivered the line, “Every day, it gets better” from the White House.
It’s not every day that a sitting president takes cues from a sex columnist who once licked Gary Bauer’s doorknob. But for all his prowess as an advice writer and viral activist, Savage’s most lasting influence on American culture may ultimately register in a deeper and more enduringly significant realm: ethics. While he built his following by talking without fear or euphemism about the technical aspects of intimate life, Savage has moved inexorably over the years toward focusing on the moral ones. In so doing, he has carved a unique place for himself in the culture’s discourse about sex. For years, there have been moralizing voices on the right standing athwart the rush of sexual freedoms yelling “Stop,” and there have been others whose policy is to remain nonjudgmental toward sex as a form of expression. Savage yields to no one in his sexual libertarianism, but he has not been content to relegate the ideas of right and wrong to cultural conservatives. Wading deep into the free-fire zone of modern sexuality, he has codified a remarkably systematic—and influential—set of ethics where traditional norms have fallen away. The question is, into what kind of world do his ethics lead us?
s he tells it in the introduction to his first book, Savage Love: Straight Answers from America’s Most Popular Sex Columnist, Savage grew up in a home crammed with newspapers and porn. His grandfather, in whose apartment he lived, was a sportswriter for two Chicago dailies. His older brother stashed away copies of Penthouse and Playboy in the bedroom. He attributes his trajectory toward the advice-giving business to the combined influence of Ann Landers and Xaviera Hollander, who wrote the “Call Me Madam” advice column for Penthouse. He also eavesdropped on his mother, whom he called “a one-woman support group” for neighbors with problems that couldn’t be taken to a priest. The sexual revolution was well and truly on, but in the Savage household, it seems, the distinctions of mid-century American propriety still held. Newspapers casually cluttered the front room, while dirty pictures lurked under the bed. There were problems for priests and problems for sympathetic neighbors, questions for Ann Landers and questions for Xaviera.
These distinctions will be at least vaguely familiar to most Americans over the age of thirty. Savage came of age in the Indian summer of American prudery. Before Savage was born, Alfred Kinsey had begun to vex the identification of moral and behavioral norms in a way that would reverberate through the coming decades. Upon close examination, the zoologist reported, it turned out that the sexual behavior of the human animal—the term is Kinsey’s, and the choice is significant—is a good deal more varied than previously assumed. According to Kinsey’s sensational research, Americans were a lot gayer, more prone to cheating, and more sadomasochistic than the Archdiocese or the Tribune would ever want to acknowledge. Perhaps it was not the conduct of a few on the margins that had failed our moral norms, these findings suggested. Perhaps it was our norms that had failed us.
The ground beneath American sexual conventions was shifting dramatically, but the tremors only registered in mainstream culture with a considerable lag. In a 1967 column, Ann Landers published a “teen sex test” that posed a series of questions (“Have you ever been kissed while in a reclining position?” “Ever gone all the way?”) and assigned points to each one according to its gravity. By tallying up their scores, teens could find out whether they were “pure as the driven snow,” “passionate and headed for trouble,” or “condemned.” As time went by, however, more and more kids drifted toward the “condemned” end of the scale, and Landers had to update the test—first in 1978, then again in 1996.
Landers made her accommodations, but she never did start addressing the emotional and practical difficulties of, say, having a husband who insists on dressing up as a woodland animal when making love—or who wants to deviate from strict monogamy with his wife’s consent. Indeed, it was long difficult to find any cultural medium that navigated successfully between bashfulness and outright smut. Unless, that is, you lived in a city with an alternative weekly. Here was a publication format with one foot in the Tribune and one in the tattoo parlor. No dirty pictures, most likely, but plenty of news and events from the counterculture, an uncensored style book, and a bunch of personal ads aimed at gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals, all available for free at bookstores, coffee houses, head shops, food co-ops, and bohemian-friendly bars. A better setting and a more receptive audience for Dan Savage’s style of advice giving could not have been designed.
What was rather less obvious in 1991, when Savage took his place in the advice game, were the ways in which the explosion of online culture would finally break down the wall between the papers and the porn stash. Once adherents of every kink and fetish could find chat rooms, support groups, specially tailored erotica, and even social networking sites, two things happened: the culture suddenly appeared more sex-drenched than ever, and alternative media sources like the ones that published “Savage Love” could no longer get by simply serving as a bulletin board and instruction manual for erotic explorers. Savage, for his part, seemed to relish this moment of creative destruction, which all but demanded the sex columnist to perform a higher function. To those correspondents who still simply wanted to know where to find other people who shared their special hankerings, or who inquired after the meaning of some obscure sexual term, Savage impatiently pointed out the existence of Google. Instead, in his second decade as a writer, he has increasingly addressed himself to those correspondents troubled by the questions of right and wrong on the new intimate frontier.
To Read the Entire Article
By Benjamin J. Dueholm
Washington Monthly
...
After twenty years of churning out “Savage Love,” the Seattle writer can lay a legitimate claim to being America’s most influential advice columnist. He is syndicated across the world in more than seventy newspapers—mainly alternative weeklies in the United States—with well over one million in total circulation. Online, he reaches millions more readers. He is a frequent contributor to the popular radio program This American Life, and a “Savage Love” television show on MTV is said to be in the works. His podcast has a higher iTunes ranking than those of Rachel Maddow or the NBC Nightly News, and his four books have sold briskly (a fifth is due out in March). And when it suits him, the range of his commentary has become increasingly broad. In the space of one column—the one where he announced his purchase of Ann Landers’s desk—Savage offered advice to a thirty-year-old woman who wanted to sleep with a seventeen-year-old coworker (“It would be illegal for you to GO AHEAD”), fielded a question from a man with a childbirth fetish, and then, for good measure, advised the Bush administration to take a harder stance on Saudi Arabia.
Savage’s ability to mobilize legions of readers has also matured beyond the lobbing of incendiary Google bombs. Last fall, a streak of suicides by gay teenagers across the country inspired Savage and his husband, Terry, to post a video testimonial on YouTube. The two men recounted their difficulties growing up bullied and harassed, then held up their adult lives—and happiness as a couple—as evidence that, for gay people living in America, “it gets better.” Savage encouraged other people to film their own testimonials and post them online under the heading of the “It Gets Better Project.” A torrent of videos poured in, first from Savage’s regular readers, then from various Hollywood celebrities, and then from leaders in Washington. Hillary Clinton was quickly followed by Nancy Pelosi and President Obama himself, who delivered the line, “Every day, it gets better” from the White House.
It’s not every day that a sitting president takes cues from a sex columnist who once licked Gary Bauer’s doorknob. But for all his prowess as an advice writer and viral activist, Savage’s most lasting influence on American culture may ultimately register in a deeper and more enduringly significant realm: ethics. While he built his following by talking without fear or euphemism about the technical aspects of intimate life, Savage has moved inexorably over the years toward focusing on the moral ones. In so doing, he has carved a unique place for himself in the culture’s discourse about sex. For years, there have been moralizing voices on the right standing athwart the rush of sexual freedoms yelling “Stop,” and there have been others whose policy is to remain nonjudgmental toward sex as a form of expression. Savage yields to no one in his sexual libertarianism, but he has not been content to relegate the ideas of right and wrong to cultural conservatives. Wading deep into the free-fire zone of modern sexuality, he has codified a remarkably systematic—and influential—set of ethics where traditional norms have fallen away. The question is, into what kind of world do his ethics lead us?
s he tells it in the introduction to his first book, Savage Love: Straight Answers from America’s Most Popular Sex Columnist, Savage grew up in a home crammed with newspapers and porn. His grandfather, in whose apartment he lived, was a sportswriter for two Chicago dailies. His older brother stashed away copies of Penthouse and Playboy in the bedroom. He attributes his trajectory toward the advice-giving business to the combined influence of Ann Landers and Xaviera Hollander, who wrote the “Call Me Madam” advice column for Penthouse. He also eavesdropped on his mother, whom he called “a one-woman support group” for neighbors with problems that couldn’t be taken to a priest. The sexual revolution was well and truly on, but in the Savage household, it seems, the distinctions of mid-century American propriety still held. Newspapers casually cluttered the front room, while dirty pictures lurked under the bed. There were problems for priests and problems for sympathetic neighbors, questions for Ann Landers and questions for Xaviera.
These distinctions will be at least vaguely familiar to most Americans over the age of thirty. Savage came of age in the Indian summer of American prudery. Before Savage was born, Alfred Kinsey had begun to vex the identification of moral and behavioral norms in a way that would reverberate through the coming decades. Upon close examination, the zoologist reported, it turned out that the sexual behavior of the human animal—the term is Kinsey’s, and the choice is significant—is a good deal more varied than previously assumed. According to Kinsey’s sensational research, Americans were a lot gayer, more prone to cheating, and more sadomasochistic than the Archdiocese or the Tribune would ever want to acknowledge. Perhaps it was not the conduct of a few on the margins that had failed our moral norms, these findings suggested. Perhaps it was our norms that had failed us.
The ground beneath American sexual conventions was shifting dramatically, but the tremors only registered in mainstream culture with a considerable lag. In a 1967 column, Ann Landers published a “teen sex test” that posed a series of questions (“Have you ever been kissed while in a reclining position?” “Ever gone all the way?”) and assigned points to each one according to its gravity. By tallying up their scores, teens could find out whether they were “pure as the driven snow,” “passionate and headed for trouble,” or “condemned.” As time went by, however, more and more kids drifted toward the “condemned” end of the scale, and Landers had to update the test—first in 1978, then again in 1996.
Landers made her accommodations, but she never did start addressing the emotional and practical difficulties of, say, having a husband who insists on dressing up as a woodland animal when making love—or who wants to deviate from strict monogamy with his wife’s consent. Indeed, it was long difficult to find any cultural medium that navigated successfully between bashfulness and outright smut. Unless, that is, you lived in a city with an alternative weekly. Here was a publication format with one foot in the Tribune and one in the tattoo parlor. No dirty pictures, most likely, but plenty of news and events from the counterculture, an uncensored style book, and a bunch of personal ads aimed at gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals, all available for free at bookstores, coffee houses, head shops, food co-ops, and bohemian-friendly bars. A better setting and a more receptive audience for Dan Savage’s style of advice giving could not have been designed.
What was rather less obvious in 1991, when Savage took his place in the advice game, were the ways in which the explosion of online culture would finally break down the wall between the papers and the porn stash. Once adherents of every kink and fetish could find chat rooms, support groups, specially tailored erotica, and even social networking sites, two things happened: the culture suddenly appeared more sex-drenched than ever, and alternative media sources like the ones that published “Savage Love” could no longer get by simply serving as a bulletin board and instruction manual for erotic explorers. Savage, for his part, seemed to relish this moment of creative destruction, which all but demanded the sex columnist to perform a higher function. To those correspondents who still simply wanted to know where to find other people who shared their special hankerings, or who inquired after the meaning of some obscure sexual term, Savage impatiently pointed out the existence of Google. Instead, in his second decade as a writer, he has increasingly addressed himself to those correspondents troubled by the questions of right and wrong on the new intimate frontier.
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Nicholas Carr author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Nicholas Carr author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Media Matters with Bob McChesney (WILL: Illinois Public Radio)
Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology. He is the author of the 2008 Wall Street Journal bestseller The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is "widely considered to be the most influential book so far on the cloud computing movement," according the Christian Science Monitor. His earlier book, Does IT Matter?, published in 2004, "lays out the simple truths of the economics of information technology in a lucid way, with cogent examples and clear analysis," said the New York Times. His new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was published in June 2010. Carr's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
To Listen to the Episode
Media Matters with Bob McChesney (WILL: Illinois Public Radio)
Nicholas Carr writes on the social, economic, and business implications of technology. He is the author of the 2008 Wall Street Journal bestseller The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google, which is "widely considered to be the most influential book so far on the cloud computing movement," according the Christian Science Monitor. His earlier book, Does IT Matter?, published in 2004, "lays out the simple truths of the economics of information technology in a lucid way, with cogent examples and clear analysis," said the New York Times. His new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, was published in June 2010. Carr's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
To Listen to the Episode
Media Matters: Norman Solomon
Norman Solomon
Media Matters with Bob McChesney (WILL: Illinois Public Radio)
Norman Solomon is a columnist on media and politics. He wrote the nationally syndicated "Media Beat" weekly column from 1992 to 2009. Solomon is the founder and president of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts. His latest book is "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State" (2007). Join McChesney and Solomon at 1pm on Sunday for a lively and informative discussion. http://www.normansolomon.com
To Listen to the conversation
Media Matters with Bob McChesney (WILL: Illinois Public Radio)
Norman Solomon is a columnist on media and politics. He wrote the nationally syndicated "Media Beat" weekly column from 1992 to 2009. Solomon is the founder and president of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a national consortium of policy researchers and analysts. His latest book is "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State" (2007). Join McChesney and Solomon at 1pm on Sunday for a lively and informative discussion. http://www.normansolomon.com
To Listen to the conversation
History for the Future: Jeff Biggers on Coal in the Heartland
Jeff Biggers on Coal in the Heartland
History for the Future
Jeff Biggers discusses the history of coal mining in Illinois, and the nation. Biggers is an award winning journalist and author of the book Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, just published this year by Nation Books. This study asks readers to consider the true cost of coal by exploring the toll its production has taken on people and the environment throughout American history. On the show, Biggers talks about his book, the myth of “clean coal,” and his hopes for a truly clean energy future.
To Listen to the Interview
History for the Future
Jeff Biggers discusses the history of coal mining in Illinois, and the nation. Biggers is an award winning journalist and author of the book Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland, just published this year by Nation Books. This study asks readers to consider the true cost of coal by exploring the toll its production has taken on people and the environment throughout American history. On the show, Biggers talks about his book, the myth of “clean coal,” and his hopes for a truly clean energy future.
To Listen to the Interview
Project Song: Moby and Kelli Scar -- One Song, Two Days, Three Versions
Moby: One Song, Two Days, Three Versions
by Bob Boilen
Project Song (NPR)
Watch The Making Of 'Gone To Sleep'
It takes weeks, even years, to write a song. NPR Music's Project Song challenges musicians to do it in just two days. And every Project Song participant has worked right up to the last minute — that is, until Moby.
He and collaborator Kelli Scarr finished their song in a little more than a single day. In fact, they had so much time left over, they recorded a second version of the song. And after that, they gave a small concert for the staff at NPR.
Moby has carved out a career making electronic dance music. He knocked everyone out in 1999 with a record called Play, which sold more than 10 million copies.
Moby generally works alone in his New York apartment, but for Project Song, we asked him to bring along a collaborator. He picked Kelli Scarr, a Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter with a breathtaking voice. They arrived at NPR, a bit nervous and eager.
I kicked off the songwriting process by showing them a series of photographs and words. The surreal images came from New York artist Phil Toledano; you can see more of his work at NPR's Picture Show blog. Moby and Scarr are both drawn to an image of a man in the woods wearing a trenchcoat. There's a brown briefcase on the earthen floor beside him, and his head looks like a glowing storm cloud.
Next, I gave them a series of words to chose from. Moby picked the word "flight." Scarr chose "Sunday," which Moby calls "the most depressing day of the week."
Not too long after, Moby puts the card with the word "Sunday" printed on it, along with the photograph, on a nearby chair. He picks up a bass guitar and immediately starts playing a riff in the key of E. Turns out, this hastily played bass line would become the bedrock for their new song.
To Read the Rest and Watch the Video
by Bob Boilen
Project Song (NPR)
Watch The Making Of 'Gone To Sleep'
It takes weeks, even years, to write a song. NPR Music's Project Song challenges musicians to do it in just two days. And every Project Song participant has worked right up to the last minute — that is, until Moby.
He and collaborator Kelli Scarr finished their song in a little more than a single day. In fact, they had so much time left over, they recorded a second version of the song. And after that, they gave a small concert for the staff at NPR.
Moby has carved out a career making electronic dance music. He knocked everyone out in 1999 with a record called Play, which sold more than 10 million copies.
Moby generally works alone in his New York apartment, but for Project Song, we asked him to bring along a collaborator. He picked Kelli Scarr, a Brooklyn-based singer and songwriter with a breathtaking voice. They arrived at NPR, a bit nervous and eager.
I kicked off the songwriting process by showing them a series of photographs and words. The surreal images came from New York artist Phil Toledano; you can see more of his work at NPR's Picture Show blog. Moby and Scarr are both drawn to an image of a man in the woods wearing a trenchcoat. There's a brown briefcase on the earthen floor beside him, and his head looks like a glowing storm cloud.
Next, I gave them a series of words to chose from. Moby picked the word "flight." Scarr chose "Sunday," which Moby calls "the most depressing day of the week."
Not too long after, Moby puts the card with the word "Sunday" printed on it, along with the photograph, on a nearby chair. He picks up a bass guitar and immediately starts playing a riff in the key of E. Turns out, this hastily played bass line would become the bedrock for their new song.
To Read the Rest and Watch the Video
On the Media: The Personal and Global Impact of the Web; Our Future with Technology
On the Media (NPR)
The Personal Impact of the Web
This week On the Media brings you a version of our first ever live show - a look at the internet and how it's changing us. First up, what is the net doing to as individuals? Does it make us better and more connected to each other? Or does it degrade our real life social connections and leave us at the mercy of long distance bullies? Bob and Brooke hash it out, with help from psychologist Sherry Turkle, writer Conor Friedersdorf, and net researcher Lee Rainie.
To Listen to the Conversation
The Global Impact of the Internet
Is the internet helping to free people from oppressive governments or is it simply giving those authoritarian regimes another way to spy on dissidents? Ethan Zuckerman from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society joins Brooke and Bob to discuss the internet’s role — for better or for worse — in uprisings from Iran to Egypt.
To Listen to the Conversation
Our Future with Technology
As computers become smarter (and smaller), there's a good chance that in the future, the lines between humans and computers will begin to blur. What does that mean for our essential humanness? Clive Thompson, Jamais Cascio, Jaron Lanier and Ray Kurzweil discuss a future where machines can think like humans and people become one with the web.
To Listen to the Episode
The Personal Impact of the Web
This week On the Media brings you a version of our first ever live show - a look at the internet and how it's changing us. First up, what is the net doing to as individuals? Does it make us better and more connected to each other? Or does it degrade our real life social connections and leave us at the mercy of long distance bullies? Bob and Brooke hash it out, with help from psychologist Sherry Turkle, writer Conor Friedersdorf, and net researcher Lee Rainie.
To Listen to the Conversation
The Global Impact of the Internet
Is the internet helping to free people from oppressive governments or is it simply giving those authoritarian regimes another way to spy on dissidents? Ethan Zuckerman from Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society joins Brooke and Bob to discuss the internet’s role — for better or for worse — in uprisings from Iran to Egypt.
To Listen to the Conversation
Our Future with Technology
As computers become smarter (and smaller), there's a good chance that in the future, the lines between humans and computers will begin to blur. What does that mean for our essential humanness? Clive Thompson, Jamais Cascio, Jaron Lanier and Ray Kurzweil discuss a future where machines can think like humans and people become one with the web.
To Listen to the Episode
FORA TV: Michael Pollan on Food Rules: An Eater's Manual
Michael Pollan on Food Rules: An Eater's Manual
FORA TV
Michael Pollan, one of the best-known names in food-related issues, offers a guide about health and food. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual is a set of memorable ideas for eating wisely. Many of them are drawn from a variety of ethnic or cultural traditions. Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this handy, pocket-size resource is for people who would like to become more mindful of what they are eating.
Pollan is the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire.
To Watch the Presentation
FORA TV
Michael Pollan, one of the best-known names in food-related issues, offers a guide about health and food. Food Rules: An Eater's Manual is a set of memorable ideas for eating wisely. Many of them are drawn from a variety of ethnic or cultural traditions. Whether at the supermarket or an all-you-can-eat buffet, this handy, pocket-size resource is for people who would like to become more mindful of what they are eating.
Pollan is the author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire.
To Watch the Presentation
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